"But my heart was pulsating audibly. If I could recover Martha, if, in
this serene atmosphere of good will and fairness and kindness, in the
midst of unknown possibilities of knowledge, in the company of
enthusiastic and high-minded men and women, in this arena of scientific
wonders, and in the joy and beauty of universal happiness and thrift and
peace and well doing and intuition, I could find a human companionship
in the woman whose face and nature have summed up for me the whole of
life, if I could find her! then, indeed, this new world would be all my
earthly home could be, and the endless future with her for guide and
friend would lose its terror and lonely isolation, and--I dared to think
it--even the presence of God himself become bearable.
"Chapman had stolen away from me. He had stolen to the little, dainty
rooms that were sunk in the cockpit or cabin of our boat, and I was
standing alone in the light of the midnight moons in Mars, a waif from
the far earth, incomprehensibly born after death into this human
presentiment and renewal in youth, and again instinct with revivified
passion and desire; and breathing the atmosphere of a planet that for
years I had watched through the tube of a telescope, as a floating flake
of celestial fire. A delicious drowsiness overcame me, and while I
noticed the pilot was changed, his place being taken by another, and
that we were approaching a ridgy or disturbed country, I found my way to
the white couch prepared for me, and sank into a deep and dreamless
sleep.
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